It’s been exciting to see Rosanna’s beautiful book, Calling Down the Sky (Bookland, 2015) nominated for so many literary awards this spring. Rosanna’s telling of her mama’s residential school story brought tears to many eyes at the 47th Algonquian Conference last October, where I got to introduce Rosanna to Solomon Ratt. Both Sol and Rosanna’s mama, Edna, share the th-dialect as a mother tongue.

Rosanna is one of hundreds of thousands of children or grandchildren of residential school survivors whose birthright of Cree language and culture was stolen through the wilful destruction of residential school policy. Imagining the powerlessness of a child being condemned to hell for expressing themselves with the only words they knew, her vision from the beginning included translation into Cree as an additional act of restoration.

Sincere thanks to Rosanna and to Sol for permission to post this first translation here. The columns, I’m afraid, are not as pretty as they will be in print, but thanks to Sol’s recording, you can click the audio link and listen while you read along in SRO or syllabics.